Urine collecting bottles are well known in the art and have been in use for many years. Such bottles are often used to collect the urine of a bedridden patient who must attempt to urinate while lying in a supine position. It is particularly difficult for females to urinate in a supine position, especially while attempting to maintain good hygiene during the process of urination.
Most conventional urinal bottles have an open receptacle, or mouth, that is placed against the vagina of a human female and which leads to some type of liquid-tight container to collect and retain the urine until later disposal. Some conventional urinal bottles include a mouth that is inclined away from the female user, examples of which are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,594,339 (Nugent), U.S. Pat. No. 3,473,172 (Friedman et al.), U.S. Pat. No. Des. 286,569 (Nakao et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,665,571 (Muccione), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,858 (Gamm et al.). The use of such urinal bottles requires the supine female to sit up or rotate her hips to a certain extent so that the mouth of the urinal bottle provides a good seal around her vaginal area. For an immobilized female patient, such an inclined mouth is not easy to use while attempting to maintain good hygiene.
Another conventional urinal bottle, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,382,276 (Wells), provides an opening that is inclined in the opposite direction (i.e., toward the female user) but does not provide a substantially open area with which to collect urine, but instead provides a bladder with a stopper. A further conventional urinal bottle, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,432,866 (Schwartz), does not allow for ease of positioning with one hand of the patient or user, and is not designed to rest upon a horizontal surface during the urination process.